January 25, 2017

On Sunday, January 15, Mexican farmer and indigenous activist Isidro Baldenegro López was gunned down at his uncle’s home in Coloradas de la Virgen, a town in southern Chihuahua state. For years, Baldenegro had run a nonviolent campaign to protect the pine and oak forests of the western range of the Sierra Madre. In 2005, his efforts earned him the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for North America. Unfortunately, his efforts also led to death threats and his eventual murder. Baldenegro was 51 years old.

Goldman Environmental Prize winner Isidro Baldenegro López (left) stands with Tarahumara elders in Coloradas de la Virgen, Chihuahua. Baldenegro was murdered on Jan.15, 2017. Credit: Goldman Environmental Prize

Baldenegro was the second Goldman prizewinner murdered in the past year. In March 2016, gunmen killed 2015 Goldman winner Berta Cáceres, an environmental activist who led her Lenca people of Honduras against a proposed dam. Baldenegro, a leader of the Tarahumara people, defended the old growth forests of the Sierra Madre Occidental against drug traffickers and loggers. The Tarahumara are one of the largest indigenous groups in North America.

Baldenegro’s environmental actvism was passed down from his father, Julio Baldenegro, who, in 1986, was also murdered for opposing logging in the mountain forests. Isidro formed his first advocacy group in 1993 and began organizing efforts to stop logging—efforts that have met with little success. Violence erupted in his region of Chihuahua in 2006 as the government stepped up its campaign against drug cartels. Already fighting against loggers, Baldenegro and others then faced armed gangs who cleared trees to plant marijuana on the mountainsides.

Death threats had forced Baldenegro to maintain a low profile for several years, and he had moved away from his home in the Guadalupe y Calvo Municipality at the southern tip of Chihuahua. He had only recently returned to visit the home of an uncle—where he was killed. Four other activists were also killed in Guadalupe y Calvo over the past year. The deaths of Cáceres, Baldenegro, and others highlight the dangers activists face in Latin America, where big business and criminal interests often conflict with local communities.

The Sierra Madre Occidental range hosts diverse ecosystems with snow-covered peaks and four separate canyons, each deeper than Arizona’s Grand Canyon. The forests and rivers are home to numerous species of amphibians, fish, reptiles, and migratory birds, as well as many threatened or endangered species of goshawks, macaws, owls, and parrots.